“Yes.” His voice came out in a long groan. He rose up slightly and arched his neck.
He was rock hard as he increased his speed, which sent her suddenly hurtling over the edge. She screamed as the orgasm rushed through her well and pushed upward in an explosion of pleasure that kept rising and taking her higher and higher. Her chest felt full of fire. Stars bloomed in her head. She watched him at the same time as he shouted his release and kept pumping.
The sensations swirled around her, the feel of her well pulsing with pleasure, of her abdomen spasming and her chest igniting with so much love.
Coming down took time as she slowly made her way back to earth and his hips grew quiet.
She breathed hard as did he.
“You look so beautiful.” Yolen wore a soft smile on his lips and in his eyes.
She touched his face, one of her favorite things. “I love you.”
He nodded. “I never thought that love would feel like such a small word. What I feel right now seems as big as the night sky.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
“Can you feel the bond?”
She nodded against the soft furs. “Like an invisible line between us now, something that can never be broken.”
“Yes, just like that.”
He kissed her again and she embraced him, holding him close.
* * * * * * * * *
Yolen made love to his woman repeatedly, taking turns with the champagne and strawberries, and only decided to leave the living room when the fire in the hearth had broken down into a dim layer of red coals. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bedroom.
Once there, he laid her in his bed in the same way he’d placed her on the chaise earlier. He loved seeing her there, taking up a space in his life he’d once thought would never be filled because of the way he viewed his dangerous profession.
Now she was here, his blood rose. Because of Brianna, he would never know the intense crippling effects of chronic blood starvation that usually came with rising to mastyr status. Instead, her special gift would keep him permanently satiated as well as empowered. He felt blessed beyond words.
Ethan had told him what he might expect once he gained mastyr status and a little guilt hit him that he’d just avoided a truckload of suffering, and all because of Brianna.
He would treasure her forever. That’s what he promised himself as he made love to her for the first time in his bed. He confessed his love repeatedly and she did the same, always touching his face, caressing him.
At last, when it was time to sleep, he made sure the security sun-shades were lowered around his entire house, then crawled in next to her. She murmured her love once more as she curled into him. He surrounded her with his arms.
She relaxed against his body and he had the thought that life truly got no better than this, to have made love to his woman, to have secured his home, then to be holding her in his arms while she slept.
His heart felt full of so many things. But mostly, he felt gratitude, a deep, pervasive thankfulness that spread through his entire body like a soothing balm. He felt that he’d been made new.
Brianna was his blood rose and he’d just become a mastyr vampire.
He felt the level of his power and he knew now that he truly did equal Mastyr Vampire Ethan in his mastyr status. He’d always suspected, but until this moment, he hadn’t been sure.
But what to do with so much power?
He would soon have to appear before the Sidhe Council, the governing body that had existed forever in the Nine Realms. The exalted group of fae leadership would be required by realm law to test him, yet he already knew the truth. He and Ethan were the same.
Under Realm law, they would even be required to battle to prove superiority.
But Ethan was his friend and he didn’t want to challenge him. And on some deep level he knew that he didn’t have the same heart for the Bergisson Realm that Ethan did.
Maybe he’d grown tense, or maybe his arms around Brianna had tightened because of these new concerns, but suddenly she woke up, then rose onto her hip to look down at him. But what she said, stunned him. “Yolen, I just had the most amazing dream or maybe it was vision. You were standing with Ethan before the Sidhe Council. You’d been judged to be his equal in mastyr power.”
“And did we battle?” His worst fear. “Under the law, two mastyrs of equal power must battle until one or the other is the victor.”